A must-read essay for smart people

VDH FTW

Victor Davis Hanson

Why Is Governor Newsom Going Full Jefferson Davis?

What triggered the American Civil War were state officials who refused to honor federal law and instead boasted of their open defiance of Washington.

That precedent apparently is the incendiary model for the weird, but dangerous recent behavior of an increasingly unhinged California Governor Gavin Newsom.

He is currently supporting the often-violent protestors in Los Angeles and their resistance to federal officials’ enforcement of immigration laws.

Newsom claimed that Trump’s use of ICE to detain those here illegally in the U.S. was “reckless”, “chaotic” and “eroding trust”.

Does he think that his own rhetoric is creating calm and building trust by opposing the lawful enforcement of federal statutes?

Or is he following the baleful model of arch-Confederate rebel Jefferson Davis?

Does Newsom support the similar defiance of fellow resistor Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass?

She all but called for official city resistance to the enforcement of federal law, with an added threat, “We will not stand for this."

What does Bass—who recently was junketing in Ghana as entire swaths of Los Angeles were incinerated—mean by “we”?

All of Los Angeles? The LAPD? Will Bass use the LA police to stand against federal officers who are implementing the law and have a constitutional right and indeed requirement to enforce federal laws within the states?

Does the governor grasp that his reckless states’ rights rhetoric empowers violent protestors who torch cars, pelt passersbys, and assault officers?

Take, for example, fellow California Democrat, Congresswoman Norma Torres. She just messaged federal immigration officers with the obscene threat,“Get the f--- out of LA.”

Does Torres believe that Los Angeles should become a modern-day South Carolina of 1861, boasting that it will defy the federal government?

Is Torres echoing Democrat and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries? He just boasted that he would dox endangered ICE agents, publishing their personal information and revealing their identities (“Every single one of them, no matter what it takes, no matter how long it takes, will of course be identified.”).

How exactly does Rep. Torres think she is going to get federal officers “the f--- out of LA”? Does Torres consider the now outnumbered and often threatened ICE officers to be the modern versions of surrounded federal troops at Fort Sumner?

Newsom did just not stop at siding with violent resistors to federal officers. He again took on the federal government and the Trump administration for reminding California that it is subject to federal fines for its current defiance of federal Title 9-related presidential executive orders barring transgendered biological men from competing in women’s sports.

Trump recently was merely following the precedent of the Obama administration that first issued such warnings of cut-offs to educational institutions that might not abide its own Title 9 federal policies and directives.

Here is how Newsom worded his threats of insurrectionary resistance to Washington: “Californians pay the bills for the federal government.

We pay over $80 BILLION more in taxes than we get back. Maybe it’s time to cut that off”. Cut that off? Has the rebellious Newsom read the U.S. Constitution?

Is he calling for us Californians not to pay our federal income taxes? Does he know that he just de facto called for federal tax evasion—an act that could be construed as a felony under 18 U.S.C. Section 2 of the federal tax code?

States do not have the legal authority to override the federal government by arbitrarily withholding federally warranted income taxes from its U.S. citizens.

In 1861 such defiance almost destroyed the U.S. And does a clueless Newsom really believe that California’s $80 billion surplus of taxes versus receivables with the U.S. Treasury actually pays “the bills for the federal government”? Hardly.

In truth, it amounts to no more than 1.5 percent of the annual $5.5 trillion in federal revenue? Does Newsom even realize that California taxpayers are American citizens first, and California residents second?

Or has his past advocacy for defiant sanctuary cities and current nullification of federal law made him a states’ rights rebel in the past fashion of George Wallace’s Alabama resistance?

Beside their Confederate-like defiant threats to resist federal laws, do Newsom, Bass, and Torres realize they are clearly on the wrong side of public opinion?

Despite the media and leftwing hysterias, even the liberal CBS poll just reported that 54 percent of Americans still support deportation as a legitimate means of enforcement of federal immigration law.

In contrast, Newsom’s latest polls show that just 2 percent of Democrats envision him as their 2028 party presidential nominee. Worse, in the most recent average of some 30 polls, only 27 percent of those surveyed expressed a favorable opinion of Newsom.

Does he think that illegal aliens violently breaking the laws of the nation in which they demand to stay and burning its flag, while waving the flag of the foreign country to which they refuse to return, will win the support of the American people?

Does he grasp that 75 percent of Americans support the deportation of illegal aliens who commit criminal acts like many of those currently in the Los Angeles protests? Or is Newsom signaling that given all these polls he prefers to end his political career—and so just blew it up?

credit: Kaleb Nation